Ross OverDrive Aids Barrington News Ops

SYRACUSE, N.Y.The Barrington Broadcasting Group's Syracuse operation includes the television facilities of WSTM-TV/WSTQ and WTVH, along with a 24/7 weather channel serving the local market.

We're very news intensive—a typical broadcast day here includes some seven hours of live news programming.

To assist in production of this quantity of news programming, we installed our first Ross Video OverDrive Automated Production Control system in 2005, the year this unique rundown-based technology was launched.

Barrington purchased OverDrive for the facility as part of their early adoption and rollout of this automated news production technology, and I was directly involved with the commissioning of the system. Barrington now has 11 OverDrive systems on the air across the country, serving both small- and medium-sized markets.

ADDED A SECOND NEWS PRODUCTION SYSTEM

After that successful installation, and subsequently managing all of our live news production with OverDrive for four years, this year we purchased our second system from Ross.

Barrington Syracuse is one of the first multichannel news operations to use two Ross OverDrive systems driven from a single ENPS news system. With this implementation at our facility, we have created additional efficiencies and news production capabilities using our existing resources.

The two OverDrive systems work seamlessly with ENPS, using a real-time bidirectional MOS protocol interface. This architecture allows for "on-the-fly" unscripted changes made in ENPS to immediately update the playout rundown in the respective OverDrive Rundown Control client application.

Being able to accommodate late-breaking news on two news channels simultaneously is a major competitive advantage for this system and our facility.

Our second Ross OverDrive installation went as smoothly as the first, and news operations personnel here were able to quickly pick up on the toolset and workflow.

To facilitate the process, we employ two in-house experts who share, collaborate and train other users. Once they're trained, all of our operators are able to deliver the same consistent and error-free production with OverDrive. This really levels the operational playing field without compromising any of the complexity and/or pace of the news production process.

We have not faced any production challenges with OverDrive, and have found that we are able to do more now with our automated workflow than with our legacy traditional system.

Our facility offers high-quality and fast-paced news production, regardless of the day of the week, the time of day, or the operating personnel on duty. OverDrive technology is allowing us to produce higher quality newscasts for our entire news offering, and it has proven to be completely scalable to our production needs and staffing levels.

Ross not only offers the market-leading automated production control solution, they back it up by delivering the best end-to-end service and support in the industry.

I believe that the OverDrive system has addressed many of the challenges the industry faces in news production today. Regardless of the operator skill level, or the production requirement, OverDrive's flexible and powerful feature set continues to generate consistent, solid news production at Barrington Syracuse.

Jim Marco has been the director of engineering for Barrington Syracuse, and has been in broadcasting for more than 33 years. He may be contacted at[email protected].

For additional information, contact Ross Video at 613-652-4886, or visitwww.rossvideo.com.